


Timothy Drake, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder

by MaurianasRavenholdt



Series: BatFamily DSM-V [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Brief Allusion to Child Neglect, Gen, Mental Health Perspective, OCPD, Shamelessly Cherry-picking Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25995061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaurianasRavenholdt/pseuds/MaurianasRavenholdt
Summary: Part 2 of BatFamily DSM-V, a series of one-shot character portraits detailing the struggles with mental illness and addiction that members of the ‘Family’ deal with on a day to day basis.OCPD - a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness and efficiency, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts.
Series: BatFamily DSM-V [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1528796
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Timothy Drake, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder

Observation. It was what Tim was best at. His niche skill as Robin. Everything else was _work_ \- the athletics, the mechanics, the technical know-how. Not that he didn’t excel at those too, thank you very much, he just wasn’t _perfect_ at them. But watching for patterns? Keeping a list of clues in his head? Making connections nobody else could because only _he_ had all the cards? Because he _owned_ the truth?

 _That_ was what he was born to do. 

It started when he was young, too. Small details stuck in his mind, just waiting to be snapped to others. So when he went to the circus and saw the Flying Graysons perform their last, magnificent act, when he saw them _die_ , it wasn’t the trauma of it that kept him awake at night, it was the _details_. How many rotations did the boy in the bright costume make before he grabbed the bar? Four, definitively. What colors did he wear? What was the precise sound his parent’s bodies made when they hit the dirt and sawdust?

Every detail was catalogued. Every photo and poster and newspaper article was saved. Filed and annotated. 

He was six. His mother thought he was precocious. His father thought it was a nuisance.

They both decided he needed therapy. 

It never amounted to much. The psychologist thought the behavior was peculiar but benign. A coping mechanism for the traumatic experience of seeing two people die before his very young eyes. She recommended Tim make some friends, a skill he lacked. There was little else that concerned her. Children are resilient, she explained, and that was enough for Jack and Janet Drake. Obligation to their only child fulfilled, they decided they needed a break from the stress, and left Tim with a nanny while they retreated in the Swiss Alps. The time alone allowed Tim space to research. 

The boy’s name was Dick. Richard John Grayson, taken in under the guardianship of Bruce Wayne, billionaire and eccentric. A neighbor, of sorts - a familiar face to Tim. Part of him wanted to slip out and uncover more details, see the boy with his own eyes once again. He didn’t, but he kept all the files he’d created and organized in a box under his bed, labeled in stark black Crayola marker - “RJG”.

Dick’s was the first dossier Tim created, but not the last. As the years passed, boxes accumulated in his closet, too. Bruce Wayne. Oswald Cobblepot. Carmine Falcone. Batman.

_Robin._

In the back of his mind, it niggled at him. The similarities between Dick’s box and Robin’s. Dark hair, young, jovial, acrobatic ability. Tim would have chalked it up to coincidence if it hadn’t been for the news broadcast. 

Jack Drake was an idle newswatcher. Mostly interested in sensationalism or the stocks. But Tim sat, in his crisp, clean clothes with his knees folded up under him just so, watching with rapt, undivided attention. Sometimes with a notepad, when he thought his father wouldn’t see. Jack Drake was not fond of Tim’s hobby, nor of the perfectly aligned storage boxes with curious labels that seemed to be taking over the boy’s bedroom. 

The news one particular night was riveting. Not because it was out of the ordinary for Gotham, but because someone had actually managed to get footage of Batman and Robin taking down the Penguin. The three of them together would have been enough to get Tim’s pulse racing and his hand flying to take his meticulous notes, but then he saw it. Robin leapt from a high crate, swung from a hanging lamp, and _flew_.

One, two, three…

Four rotations. 

The dark haired boy in the bright costume landed a jump Tim knew to be signature to only one living person on Earth. 

Dick Grayson. 

There was a frustrating impotence in _knowing_ something like that at such a young age. Jack would have ignored him if he said anything, and Tim’s mom would have been more concerned than interested. It took years for him to find a purpose to his hard work - the research, the silence, the perfection of it all. 

When he turned fourteen, he noticed a pattern shift almost immediately. Batman’s dossier started to fill up with tales of outright _viciousness_. Directly coinciding with the death of Bruce Wayne’s first legal son, Jason Todd. Based on his amassed information, Tim could only come to once conclusion. 

Batman _needed_ a Robin. And there was only one man qualified for the job. 

It wasn’t hard to find Dick Grayson. After all, he’d been the first of Tim’s detailed files. Convincing him to help was another matter entirely. It was hard to see someone Tim idolized turn his back on the only position he was born to have. Nightwing was a passing fancy. Robin, Tim had concluded, was who Dick was _meant_ to be. 

Naturally, Dick disagreed. 

But Tim knew, in the rigid, unyielding sense that he knew the boy from the circus had retooled his skills toward vigilantism; Batman needed a Robin. If Dick wouldn't help, he was the only one left to take up the charge. And as he excelled in the World’s Greatest Detective’s realm, he knew one thing for certain - he would make sure _his_ Robin was perfect.


End file.
